Recording in progress.

Good evening.

It is Tuesday, April 7th at 6 p.m.

I'm going to exercise a little discretion here and call to order the Washer County Capital Improvements Advisory Committee first thing.

And then we'll be able to excuse our member from that.

And then we'll convene the county planning commission.

So could we have a determination of quorum?

Mike Flick.

Mindic Kennedy.

Here.

Kate Nelson.

Here.

Amy Owens.

Present.

Dan Vazareschi.

Here.

Matthew Robison.

Jim Barnes here.

Rob Pierce.

President.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Thank you.

We're opening the hearing now.

Do we have any public comment on the Capital Improvements Advisory Committee?

No public comment in chambers, no public comment on Zoom.

All right, then we have one hearing.

Do we have that presentation for the regional road impact fee?

Mr.

Chair, if it's okay, I'll read it into the record.

Okay.

Okay, this item uh recommendation to the Washoe County Board of County Commissioners to adopt the eighth edition of the regional road impact fee, the general administration manual, the eighth edition of the capital improvement program, and the revised fees for review discussion and possible action pursuant to NRS 278B 150 and Washoe County Code Section 11070605 to recommend approval to the Washoe County Board of County Commissioners of amendments uh to the regional road impact fee general administrative manual and the RIF Capital Improvement Plan with revised fees.

And uh let's see representing Washoe County in this matter is uh senior engineer Michaan Reed.

Good evening, everyone.

Um so Jeff Wilbert from RTC is gonna give a presentation about the regional road impact fee eighth edition update.

And I'll do that now.

All right, thank you very much.

Oops sorry about that.

My name is Jeff Wilbricht, I'm a engineering manager at RTC.

I help administer the RIF program for um our community.

So to kind of kick us off, um talk about why we're doing this effort and what really impact fees are.

So to kind of introduce it kind of on an easy level, it's a funding tool that we use to add capacity to our roadway network uh when new um development occurs.

Um it's really intended so when new development creates additional demands on um public facilities provided by local governments like roads or water or sewer facilities.

If those capacity uh if the capacity of those facilities is not increased to satisfy that new demand, um the quality of service will be degraded.

So this is identified as a funding tool to allow new development to kind of help pay their share.

The program has a couple advantages and a couple limitations.

Um it's advantage, like I said earlier, it allows development to pay its fair share, and really it's but it's viewed as an equitable system and it's been supported by the community.

The program itself has been in place since roughly the mid-90s.

Um, so it's a kind of a long-standing program that our community is very familiar with.

It does have a couple limitations.

Those fees that are collected that cannot be used for the operating cost of any of those facilities.

So for the operation of the traffic signal, for example, we can't use um those monies to pay for the operation of that signal.

Similarly, maintenance expenses, so we can't use um RIF funds to pay for preventative maintenance of the roadway, and we can't use it for non-capacity related improvements.

So a bike um cycle track or something like that is we cannot use RIF money for those types of roadway improvements.

Uh the program itself is governed uh through NRS 278B.

Um, the local governments of Reno Sparks and Washoe County all have um their own ordinances that allow the inaction and um collection of impact fees, and then collectively as a group of RTC, City of Reno, City of Sparks, and Washoe County, we're all entered into a cooperative agreement that was executed back in the early 90s that allows the kind of joint operation of a RIF program.

And that's why I from RTC in here.

RTC was identified as kind of the administrator or the initiator of the program.

So local agencies collect the fees, they distribute into a pile, and I'll talk about kind of the service areas of how that is distributed to then develop and construct capacity improvements for a roadway network.

The program itself has two kind of guiding documents, the GAM and the CIP.

So you'll start to kind of hear some acronyms thrown out through this presentation.

It's the general administrative manual, and that's really the guidelines of how we administer the program.

So that gives kind of RTC staff, county staff, local development community, kind of the rules of the road of how the programs initiated and administered.

And then the capital improvement plan or the CIP is the document that defines how we calculate the fee, what the fee is kind of the list of projects that are generate the fee and kind of go through that the calculation effort there too.

So why are we here?

We're doing uh doing an update.

So RTC per that ICA is responsible for initiating periodic reviews.

NRS also requires this, so we're just following NRS through this process.

Um we always follow a review following our RTP, which is the regional transportation plan.

That's a document that RTC planning does every four years.

So following that plan, we have kind of a fresh set of um data and analysis that's been done from TMRPA of how they're planning and looking at our community.

RTC looks at it from the track uh transportation traffic kind of side of it, and then we take all that planning effort and develop it into this RIF update.

Um, like I said earlier, the RTP is used as the list of capital improvements that are attributable to new development.

So part of that effort is looking at what are the capacity needs in our community.

The RTP looks at that and how are we going to fund and deliver those in future years.

Um, so we work with uh we have a RIF TAC or technical advisory committee, and that's made up of representatives of Reno Sparks and Washoe County, as well as uh Rob is on our committee as well.

There's a member of the planning commission of each local jurisdiction.

Um, and then we have members of the private industry that come to the table to help talk about their interests as well to make sure that we're all kind of working together to administer and develop this fee.

So we've been working on that since last November.

This is kind of a flow chart.

I have a couple slides later on that go into a little bit more detail.

The thing I want you to take away from this slide is really the layers that go into the development of the fee itself.

So the red is really from TMRPA.

That's when they're looking at the consensus forecast, they're looking at land use, they're looking at the master plans of all the local agencies of how the local agencies have identified how they want to use land, what's available.

Um, and then we take that information into RTC planning's efforts of the travel demand model and the RTP development to get another acronym I'm gonna talk about later on is BMT, which is vehicle miles traveled.

That's a service unit that we have to use to administer the RIF program.

So we take this kind of TMRPA and RTC planning effort, and then we transition that into the RIF administration side of things.

And that's where we're looking at the service areas and the capital improvements that kind of flow into all these things.

We develop a dollar per VMT that would be attributable to new development, and then we develop a schedule of um cost that would be um that we use to develop a fee schedule based on land use.

So to kind of talk about the TMRA TMRPA's role in this, like I said earlier, they use the consensus forecast.

They they're looking at um existing land uses, zoning and designations to kind of see what's available out there between uh approved developments, um, available land, what's kind of constrained, what's available, and then from that they develop estimates of how that land could be used from a total housing units or uh an employment capacity standpoint.

Um the thing on this slide I really want to emphasize is the service units measured.

So NRS requires um an impact fee to be identified as a in a single unit that's attributable to the new development.

So in RIF we use VMTs.

Um just make sure I'm hitting my notes on that one.

Um so VMTs are a combination of the number of vehicles traveling on the road and the distance of miles traveled.

So I have some later on slides that kind of show the difference of VMTs between a north benefit district and a south benefit district, but we develop those numbers based on that team RPA consensus forecasting and travel demand modeling, which is this one.

So RTC, one of our efforts through our planning department is a travel demand model.

So that's a model that looks at our entire area and these traffic analysis zones of what traffic is entering and exiting these different land use uses in throughout our community.

So we'll do some modeling efforts to understand what is the length of trip and the number of trips on a regional road network.

And it's kind of hard to see, but the orange segments are what we consider the regional road network.

So that's going from the local road to a regional road onto the freeway, which is not part of the regional network, back onto a regional network, and then the local road.

So it's calculating what is the length of trip, the number of trips between these traffic analysis zones throughout our area.

And you can kind of translate it into all those green and blue dots or all the zones.

So we're calculating all these average trip lengths between the two zones.

So we translate that into a need.

So that's kind of the need development that we translate into the RTP effort.

So the RTP is a big effort that RTC undertakes every four years.

We're looking at all types of use of needs of transportation infrastructure and needs in our community from safety improvements, capacity improvements, multimodal improvements, maintenance, safety.

I think there's eight different categories that are in the RTP.

And that develops a series of priorities.

All these projects are ranked against those priorities, and then we develop a project list.

And so the CIP for a RIF is identified as the capacity projects that are in the first 10 years of this RTP.

RTP has two kind of planning years, the first 10 years and then the second 15 years.

So it's a 25-year horizon.

And the RIF program is really focused on the first 10 years.

So through all that kind of flow chart of analysis, we get ultimately to this chart.

So what we find in this chart is the total RIF share of needed improvement is roughly 150 million dollars.

And then we understand the difference between what is in the north side, what is in the south benefit district.

That's just the simple 89 million and 60 million is the 60 and 40% roughly.

And then we look at the VMT growth by service area.

So that's the the planned out of the travel demand model, how much VMTs are going to be coming out of each of those service areas.

And from there, it's a simple division of you know, dollar per VMT based on the service area.

And so that gets us our net cost per service area.

So then, sorry, this is a really busy chart, it's not in just more of a explanation, but we take that total or that um unit VMT cost per service area and attribute it to different land use types.

So we want to make sure the programs um administratable and repeatable.

And so we're looking at different types of land use of residential, industrial, commercial, and other uses such as lodging, hospitals, nursing homes.

And we have different, you know, like a single family houses of every dwelling unit has a certain impact fee.

Uh retail, you know, drinking, eating uh restaurant place.

Uh, we're basing the amount of traffic generated on that based on the um square footage of the facility.

The bigger the facility, the more traffic can generate.

All these um this analysis really follows ITE traffic um Institute of Traffic Engineering trip generation manual.

So we're looking at the updated trip generation rates and kind of normalizing this for all these different development types to get a um useful um and administratable series of cost and fees to attribute to new development.

This also shows the difference of the seventh edition, which is the last, the kind of current funding structure and the new funding structure.

And actually, if you notice the rate of change is actually a little bit lower in our eighth edition than the seventh edition, and the main reason behind that is um NRS requires that we index or inflate, you know, go through and look at inflation rates of every year to increase the fees based on inflation.

And so we're at the year four indexing, and um, so it's we've had as many of you know a lot of inflation in the last couple of years, and it's just now catching up to us.

So this update is a good activity to kind of make sure that the costs and the impacts, the growth is all being normalized to current projections.

So here's kind of a quick comparison.

Um, actually, you know, between the seventh edition and the eighth edition, the costs are increasing for capital needs.

So from 132 to about 149 million.

The biggest change is the VMTs are decreasing.

And so, in that travel demand model update um effort that RTC planning went through, they went through a household survey where they looked at all the different um changes and how are people traveling, commuting, all that kind of stuff.

And there was a noticeable change, and there's probably a myriad of reasons for it, but maybe more work from home, maybe more deliveries.

And then we also updated some land use definitions.

So logistics centers and data centers are just newer terms that are being thrown around, and we wanted to make sure that they were captured.

And then we updated the terminology just to align with other documents.

So the RTP, for example.

And the last thing to kind of highlight of why there's been some lag from the November 24th is we did recently do a business impact statement for this new fees.

And so a business impact statement was required per NRS assembly bill 444 NRS 337.

It was intended to identify and disclose potential impacts to businesses, and it's open to review.

So finding number one was it concluded that the eighth edition does not expect to secure impose a direct or city significant economic burden on a business.

So that was back to that complex table that I showed earlier where those fees were just kind of fluctuating slightly, and that's really based on trip generation changes, um, travel amount model changes.

Um but it's all kind of within a normal purview.

And so for the next steps, so I'm here with the planning commission uh or CIAC, I'm sorry, uh the county.

I'm gonna also be going to Reno and Sparks, and then we go to the Board of County Commissioners and the city councils for a formal adoption process.

So following that, there'll be a 30-day notice period, and then there'll be uh these new fees and the new GAM and CIP will be implemented in June of actually 26th.

Sorry, that's a typo there.

And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Sorry for the kind of long presentation, but I had to hit the highlights.

Okay.

Thank you.

Are there questions from the board for the presenter?

I need the possibility.

I have a question.

My name Commissioner Flick.

Um your fees are based upon um the stratification of numbers depending upon the use of the land.

Okay.

Now, is there a standard highway development that you use as far as what's the cost of that highway?

Um, does it have you know bike trails and sidewalks and sound barrier walls and and what have you?

Um does that fee go into or the cost go into the the uh increase and inflation.

Yeah, and then determine the um for lack of better word, the per unit based upon use cost.

How does that work?

So I don't know, go back to the slide, but so of that 150 million dollar number that I referenced earlier, that's essentially all the capacity um eligible costs that are in the RTP.

So the RTP has a long list of projects that are in other words, um, identified to move forward in the next 10 years.

And so either um RTC through RIF money or RTC through federal grant or RTC through fuel tax would be advancing these projects, and that dollar value is identifying the eligible costs of those projects.

So sometimes we'll do a project like uh Lemon Drive, for example, was a big capacity project or a Sky Vista widening was another good widening project that was a big capacity improvement project, but if they also included other components that were not RIF eligible, so Lemon Drive, for example, has a shared use path from roughly Buck Drive Sky Vista down to military road.

So that part of the project would not be eligible under this RIF funding, so that was excluded from that number.

The only part of that number, 150 million would would have been the actual cost for design and construction of the capacity component only of that.

And so all of the projects would be publicly led projects, not a developer-led project.

Does that answer your question?

Sort of.

I guess um.

You know, you have a do you have a per lane cost?

Um, you know, some goes for one lane, the other like pyramid drive.

Okay.

Uh you go from two lanes to three lanes to two lanes again.

Yep.

And then it so how do you how do you figure that?

So all these projects that are in the RTP are go through like what we call the planning level scoping effort.

So they're not fully designed, we don't fully have you know 100% cost estimates, but we are looking at like a per lane mile, or if we know that you know it's a new road and we're gonna have to acquire right-away, we know a average dollar cost per ride away um per square foot of uh property, and then we know kind of based on the last couple of years of how much projects have cost of similar magnitude and type, what that cost would be.

So we're we're using these kind of planning level costs to identify and understand what that RTP scale project cost would be.

So on this coming up with these percentages and the uh I guess inflation, that's the only percentage that you use.

Um as far as increasing the fees, so it's five percent and so it's yeah, it's normalized over a five-year period.

So NRS requires that every year on one year after the last fees have been updated that we do an indexing effort.

And so NRS requires that we look at the Western CIP and understand what is the average on an annual basis of what that change has been.

And so back in you know, 2020 it was three or four percent, and then we had a ramp up of one year was about eight percent, and then it's kind of been coming back down.

So the average of that is what um the inflation ends up or the in increase ends up being in the last two years, it's been about four to four and a half percent is been the average increase.

And just one other last question, if I may, Mr.

Chairman.

Um other than other than land use, say, for example, um commercial or industrial, um is there any consideration given to say truck vehicle uh vehicular travel on the road and say they're they're they're based outside um Walshaw County, for example, or how do you um the reason why I'm asking is when I when I drive, I sort of get bored coming from Spanish Springs out to um the freeway.

And so I count trucks in any way from my house to the freeway.

I I count from say a minimum of 50 to 100 18 wheeler plus vehicles on the highway, and they take up a substantial part of the roadway, and they do due to the weight, uh they they tear the roadway up pretty good.

Yeah, uh, how do we compensate for that?

So yeah, do we uh this program doesn't compensate for that?

So this program would look at the number of trips and just identify the number of trips to kind of understand that travel demand model side of it.

Um again, RIF funds that cannot be used for maintenance, and so you know, RTC does other things for maintenance and endot does other things for maintenance, but um the short answer is we're not looking at the difference of a car versus a truck in the RIF program.

Okay, and so everything's based basically on an automobile correct, yeah.

The number of trips being generated out of a business or a residence, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Commission commissioner Kennedy has a question.

Go ahead, Linda.

What I have a question about is with the increasing cost of construction and all the materials.

I don't understand how these fees could be going down.

Yeah, that can you explain that in clear language?

How the costs can be going down if everything is cost to build the highways going up.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we actually, when we were developing these fees, we really recognize that and kind of question ourselves on that.

Um, do you have can I go back to that one of those slides, maybe?

So we did recognize the cost is increasing.

So the cost from the last time we did this effort was roughly 130 million dollars.

Uh see if I can get that slide.

And our new cost for capacity improvements over the next 10 years is roughly 150 million dollars.

So we are recognizing that the costs are going up.

The biggest difference is in that travel demand model.

And so oops, there it is.

So the overall number of BMTs is what's really decreased.

So the the decrease there shows that our the way that people are driving the behaviors, whatever's happening is is a decrease in the number of estimated trips that are occurring in that 10-year horizon.

So there's the first two things, and then the third thing is actually in this table.

Um so this is kind of harder to see, but if you look at the single family unit, that top line.

So in the seventh edition, there's roughly 20 to 19 VMTs.

So the way this calculation works is you take that VMTs, multiply the dollar per VMT to get the total fee amount.

And what we recognized is in the updated ITE trip generation manual, a lot of our categories kind of changed.

And so the volume of trips being generated from these different land use types, some of them decreased, some of them increased.

And so, for example, um I think where manufacturing had a pretty big increase at almost 15%.

Uh schools and daycare, uh, mostly it's it's private schools and private daycares had an increase of almost 9%.

And then uh offices and other services had an increase of just over 5%.

And so I we question this as well, but the biggest difference is in the number of VMTs that are being attributed to the specific land use type.

Um, and that's comes straight out of the ITE manual.

The one thing I have noticed is since there has been a decrease in busing.

Um the amount of traffic at school time has increased greatly over the last couple of years.

Have your statistics reflected that because the traffic um with parents taking kids to and from school is probably twice what it was maybe five, 10 years ago.

Yeah, so we did capture that and it is shown as an increase from the last time.

Um but your increase is not representative of what's actually happened.

Yeah, again, we I have to take the information that comes out of the ITE manual to have a legitimate kind of backbone of to summarize that.

The other thing I would add on is uh the RIF program through NRS is prohibited from collecting fees from Washam County School District or public um school facilities, they are collected for private schools um and private facilities.

What do you mean?

Uh NRS in other words, you don't pay attention to the traffic generated by public schools.

Uh we pay attention to it, but the RIF program cannot collect fees against a public school.

No, no, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm just saying when you have more people move into the community, you have more students attending public schools, right?

Correct.

Therefore, those people who move into the community generate more VMTs, right?

The school themselves.

But if you buy a house and you have three children that go to public schools that don't have bus traffic, you have to drive them to schools.

So that's additional VMTs, right?

It is.

What I'm saying is I don't feel your statistics correctly document what has been happening in our communities since the decrease of busing in Washoe School District.

Yeah, I I hear what you're saying.

I from the RIF program of how we need to administer it, we need to, or we we identify the growth based on traffic engineering guidelines.

And I know our area is unique and it's different, but we this effort did not go through any kind of otherwise highly specific analysis of um your exactly what your concern is.

Okay, my other question is you refer to it comes from IT.

What is IT stand for?

Yeah, so ITE is the Institute of Traffic Engineers.

And every so often, every two couple of years, they develop a trip generation manual.

And all of our traffic engineers in our community use that manual to identify how much traffic is going to be generated out of a certain type of development based on its size or the unit count or number of doors.

Um what is that manual based on?

Is that a national?

It's a national manual that looks at does surveys across our country that looks at um there's lots of graphs and charts that identify normal like averages of if a restaurant is this big, it's going to develop this many trips.

If a house is subdivisions this size, it's going to develop this many trips.

So in other words, you're using statistics from the United States, not from Nevada, right?

That is correct.

So Nevada or our area may or may not be relevant to US statistics, correct?

I I don't know if I would say that per se.

That's the I would kind of I would actually disagree with that.

I think we're pretty on track with a lot of the how our traffic engineers in our community and how this program is administered by identifying and using that as a reliable source of traffic generating information.

Do any of your numbers come from any data from this state, or are they all coming from national numbers?

So we do use the residential data from our region.

I'll correct myself a little bit.

So that all the residential units that are shown there, the first two lines, those do come from site specific or specific um data that we collect through TMRPA and then the travel demand model to get to the what those VMTs are.

The rest of them of industrial commercial and other offices are from the IT ITE manual.

You can lie with statistics a lot.

Yeah, I would add, you know, this program's not perfect, right?

So we have to take a lot of planning effort and a lot of assumptions and growth projections to bring all these pieces together to get a fee structure that's usable by the variety and myriad of situations that our community goes against or you know comes to.

So while it's not perfect, it's it's a useful tool, funds a lot of capacity improvements in our community.

So for example, Sky Vista Parkway widening project was recently completed and funded fully with um RIF funds in the South Benefit District.

We recently completed the Steamboat widening project.

So while it's not perfect, it is a useful tool that our community has utilized.

Did you have any further questions, Commissioner Kennedy?

No, he answered the ones I asked.

Right.

Thanks very much.

This is Rob.

I've got a couple of questions.

Jeff, great presentation.

Thank you.

Um, first question.

I saw in the paper a couple weeks ago, RIF credits were for sale.

Are they something that the general public can buy?

Yeah, so the RIF program has a credit and waiver system.

Um that's separate from this update process, but just to kind of highlight what it is.

Um earlier versions of the RIF GAM allowed the um creation of credits, which essentially offset um developer paying fees by them constructing their own off-site improvements.

So, for example, um Kylie Ranch Parkway being built as a RIF funded project, um, provided offsets to that developer as they created a um road of uh you know excess capacity um for future use.

And through that process, they uh create uh have credits available that they could then either use for their own development, or if someone else went and bought their site next door or something like that, they could use credits there to you know offset their credits.

Um we've since moved away from the credit system.

Uh we now operate a waiver system, which is uh much more limited and only eligible for um off site improvements directly attributable to a certain development.

So if uh enclosed development of record constructs something, they can only use those offsets within that only development record.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um does the developer um have any say on roads getting done where it'd be in this RIF program or anything?

Do they can they come in and say, hey, we did traffic study, we need this road.

It shows up on the 2050 RTP, and then a few months later, after the project gets approved, it gets removed from the 2050 RTP.

Is that normal practice?

Uh it's not normal practice.

So the RTP is kind of an independent process in which we're always looking at projects and their uh needs.

And as I said earlier, they go through a prioritization process that uh reviews the project based on how it is qualifying or reviewing capacity needs, safety, um, all the different goals of the RTP.

Um, so if a developer were to be looking at a project and it be in the RTP, that might be a eligible item for offsets.

Um, it might not be.

Um really it needs to that developer needs to show how whatever they're proposing to do would provide either benefit to the community or otherwise you know, develop deliver that um project identified in the CIP.

Okay.

The reason I'm yeah, so if a developer comes in and they say, hey, I want to do XYZ over here and XYZ over here, and they do a traffic study and says this certain road, the only way it's gonna work is if it's widened, they come to you, they say, Hey, we need to widen this road, you guys give them the thumbs up, you put it in the 2050 RTP for less than 10 years out, they get their project approved.

A couple weeks later, maybe a month later, it gets removed from the 2050 RTP.

Now I don't even see it on the list, so yet the projects are still a go.

Would that mess up all your numbers?

And is that common practice?

Uh that's not common practice that I'm aware of.

It would um that's why we follow the RTP.

So if the RTP were to change and something like that were to happen, we would need to revisit these numbers.

We do revisit them every two years is kind of our standard operation of practice to make sure that we are consistent with the RTP and we are consistent with um the assumptions that are in the RTP based on that planning effort.

Gotta give you two RZAs where that has happened and it's happening right now.

It is happening right now.

It just happened.

First of all, it's WRZA.

Let me put my glasses over here.

Commissioner Pierce is this about the regional results.

This is about his about his.

He said that if this happened, it would throw his numbers off.

So I just want to make sure that we have accurate numbers to go on to make our vote.

I guess right if you're aware of the numbers to change based on the it will change because it's been pulled and he pulled his numbers.

I just want to make sure that it's still included.

RZA 24 0003 and 0004.

Sorry, my pin just broke zero what?

Sorry?

RZA 24 003 and 0004.

In November, and I don't know when you pulled your data, they were on the 2050 RTP.

Now they're missing, according to the list I'm looking at right now.

So all the work that we did when you were part of was part of the RTP that was updated last uh March of 2015 or sorry, 2025.

So that is the 2050 RTP.

So if there was a project that this development was assuming was going to be built that then is removed.

I don't, I guess I don't I need to look at what these developments are, but unless they're um would it make that big of a difference if it's like a four-mile road in your calculations based upon this?

I just want to make sure it's not that sensitive, I guess.

It's not that sensitive.

Yeah, okay.

All right, okay.

That's what I was trying to get at.

Yeah.

This this has a list of lots of projects that all come together to develop this.

Um in that offset waiver and in the analysis itself, all the projects that are in the CIP are included in this analysis.

So I'm not aware of anything moving or changing based on a development, either assumptions or non-assumptions.

So I'd have to go dive into this and find out more.

I can address it later.

I'm just I'm just curious, you know, seeing your numbers and trying to go through your packet here.

I was just trying to figure out why those are all of a sudden gone.

So okay.

Um for my own clarity, the regional road impact fee only pays for the unfunded part of the regional transportation plan.

So when you guys go through and you make your uh first pass estimates of what it's gonna cost to build, you also do an evaluation of what funding exists for those um which parts of the projects are capacity that would qualify for this and aren't have available funding under other existing funding methodologies, and then that's the total for so yeah, in our there's there's layers to it, right?

So uh a planning stage is looking at what projections of funds are going to be coming in over the planning horizon.

Um we use RIF funds, we have some assumptions of what RIF funds are going to be coming in.

So we we look at that from a planning level, but on our budget level, we're looking at it much more tightly.

So every year we think, okay, here's where development's going.

Here's how much fun RIF funds we think would be available.

Um so it's uh kind of it's kind of a yes, but there's we're we're looking at all available funding.

We're looking at federal funding.

Um, those are not certain either, so in that planning horizon.

So does the change in availability of other funding sources change the no it doesn't change the need for or the amount for the RIF.

Okay, no.

Any other questions from the board?

Any discussion or debate?

Public comment.

Okay, uh any public comment.

I guess let's open public comment on this item.

I have no public comment on this item in chambers.

I have no hands raised on Zoom.

All right.

Um if there's no further discussion, do we have a motion on this item?

Okay, I'll do it.

I move that after giving reason consideration to the information contained in the staff report and the information received during the public hearing.

The Washoe County Capital Improvement Advisory Committee recommends adoption of the eighth edition of the regional road impact fee, general administrative manual, the eighth edition of the RRIF Capital Improvement Plan and revised fees for unincorporated Washoe County to the Washoe County Board of County Commissioners and authorizes the chair to sign the resolution on behalf of the CIAC.

Commissioner Nelson will second.

All those in favor, aye.

Any opposed?

Nay.

Motion carries.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Uh that brings us to the end of the public hearing part of the CIAC.

Do we have any general public comment for the CIAC?

No, general public comment in chambers.

No hands raised on tokay.

The Washoe County CIAC is adjourned.

Thank you.

Okay, it's 643.

I call this meeting of the Washa County Planning Commission to order.

Uh could I have a determination of quorum?

Mike Flick.

We have to do another quorum to restart the planning.

I'm here.

Uh Linda Kennedy.

Here.

Kate Nelson.

Here.

Amy Owens.

Present.

Dan Lazareski.

Here.

Jim Barnes?

Here.

Rob Pierce.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thanks.

Uh please join me again in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you very much.

Can we have the ethics law announcement?

Thank you.

Commissioners are reminded that if there's with respect to any matter or any person coming before the commission today, you've received a gift or a loan, you have a pecuniary interest, you have a commitment in a private capacity, such as family employment, business or similar relationship, or if you've provided representation or counseling before an agency to a person or entity for compensation within the last year on a matter that's being considered, you must disclose that gift loan interest commitment or prior representation at the time the matter is being considered.

You must furthermore abstain from deliberation or voting on the matter if it's clear that the gift loan interest commitment or prior representation would materially affect the independence of judgment of a reasonable person.

Commissioners are also reminded under the planning commission rules.

If you've had any contact outside this meeting with any person interested in a matter coming before the commission today, please disclose the nature of that contact at this meeting.

Thank you.

Could we have the appeals procedure?

Most decisions rendered by the planning commission are appealable to the Board of County Commissioners.

If you disagree with the decision of the planning commission and you qualify as an agreed person or party, you may appeal in writing within 10 calendar days from the date that the decision being appealed is reduced to writing, filed with the secretary of the planning commission and mailed to the original applicant in the proceeding being appealed in accordance with Washoe County Code.

Please call the planning staff immediately at 775-328-6100 for information on the appeal procedure and the application fee.

Thank you very much.

Excuse me.

No general public comment in chambers.

I do have one hand raised on Zoom.

Ellen Neff, please state your first or last day for the record and unmute.

Hi, my name is Helen Neff.

I'm a resident of Incline Village.

And this public comment concerns agenda item 9D, which you'll be hearing later.

The proposed amendment to Article 336 of the housing incentives as it relates to Incline Village and Crystal Bay.

Although Washoe County planning staff has indicated by email that this amendment is not attended to apply within the Tahoe area plan.

Past experience shows that such interpretations can change.

Provisions adopted countywide have later been incorporated into Tahoe area planned amendments with the explanation that they reflect broader county policy.

Recent changes to ADU setbacks illustrate this pattern.

TRPA board members and staff often state in public meetings that is if a policy is adopted by Washaw County, they do not want to object or to change it.

For this reason, we respectfully request explicit legal language in the ordinance to ensure long-term clarity and prevent unintended application within the Tahoe Basin.

Our community supports the goal of attain on workforce housing.

It's essential to maintain in a balanced and functional community.

However, we face a unique constraint.

We have extremely limited remain remainable buildable land.

And once developed, this land cannot be replaced.

So granting density bonuses in exchange for affordable housing that converts to market rate after only nine years would permanently consume scarce development capacity without securing lasting affordability.

This is concerning to the Tahoe Basin, where environmental constraints strictly limit growth.

If affordability protections expire quickly, units created through incentives such as increased density or coverage may ultimately function as market rate housing, eliminating future opportunities to serve our workforce.

Short-term affordability requirements risk providing substantial benefits to developers without delivering lasting community value.

So I provided some suggested language.

I'm not an attorney in the written comment I submitted.

We're just asking that that be clearly stated in writing that the Tahoe area plan is exempt from these proposed housing amendments.

Thank you.

I have no further public comment in chambers or on Zoom.

Thank you.

Um I hope everyone has had a chance to review the agenda with the one amendment that I pulled the CIAC hearing ahead of the rest of the planning commission meeting.

Does anyone have any changes or a motion to approve the agenda?

Commissioner Owens, I move to approve the April 7th agenda as a seconds.

Okay.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Has everyone had a chance to review the minutes from the March 3rd meeting?

Any adjustments?

If not, could I have a motion to approve?

Kennedy moves we approve the minutes as written.

Commissioner Owens for a second.

Thank you very much.

Uh all those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay.

We're on to the consent agenda.

So this is just uh a motion to approve the consent agenda as written.

Um if anyone feels we need to pull the one item off the consent agenda and have uh a presentation and hearing on it.

Um please say so now.

Otherwise, could I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

What is the consent item agenda?

I see the first thing on here says extension of time.

Correct.

That is that is the one item on the consent agenda.

Oh, I want to hear it.

Okay, we will pull agenda item eight off the consent agenda and add it to the public hearings.

That brings us to the public hearings.

Um we'll just pull this consent item first, Mr.

Lloyd.

Would you announce the extension of time?

Um extension of time case number WTM 001 Ladera Ranch for possible action for hearing discussion of possible action to approve an extension of time for WTM 2000 one for two years from August 4th, 2026 to August 4th, 2028.

The subdivision was originally approved by the planning commission on August 4th of 2020.

The planning commission may grant an extension of not more than two years for the presentation of any final map after the two-year period for presentation.

Our presenting a successive final map has expired in accordance with NRS 278-3601c.

That's the uh consent item before you today.

Thank you.

Uh Mr.

Evans.

Excuse me.

Tim Evans, planner.

Um, so what is before you today is an extension of time, um, specifically for Ladera Ranch, or it was tentative subdivision map case number TM20-001.

And so what they are proposing is to extend the time for actual recording from August 4th, 2026 to August 4th of 2028.

So there hasn't been any substantial changes or anything like that to the original proposed development, and so that's why it's just being was being proposed as a consent item.

So it's just a straight extension of time for this project.

Uh um see here.

And so specifically to give a little bit more background in relation to that um proposed development.

So it's a 294 lot common open space residential development, and there was a total of six phases.

So the first phase is a different under a different project, different case number, that type of thing.

This is specific to phase two through six for this extension.

Um, and so that's what this is to take care of is that that phase two through six to extend um that additional two years um for that development and the recording of the final maps and and that stuff.

And so what this would really be taking care of or addressing is the applicant is requesting the extension of time to record the next or the second final map.

So there has been one final map that has been recorded, so this would be the second final map that is being um proposed for this extension of time.

And so I'm available for any other questions or anything like that that the planning commission may have in relation to this project.

Thanks very much.

Um do we have any questions from the board?

Why are they requesting Mr.

Rob for the record?

Why are they requesting it to your extension?

So it was in relation to just timing itself.

There was other items that they had to take care of, conditions and things like that that prolonged them from actually being able to record the second final map.

Um, and the applicant, I believe, is in the audience as well.

So if you have any questions for them, they can probably elaborate more on what those items were specifically that has kind of prolonged um the recording of that second final map.

Um, but as far as I know that there were some items that that prohibited them or not it stopped them from actually getting that recorded and moving forward.

Have we given them an extension in the past?

Not to my knowledge, doing the the background research and looking into this specifically for phase two through six.

Um, I didn't see anything in our records that show that there has been a previous extension.

Okay, I'd like to understand a little bit more on why we're extending it.

Can I break in here for just a second?

Um if I may, the standard NRS statute allows for a two-year extension.

This is what the applicants are are requesting.

Uh it's uh kind of built into the process for developers when they uh when they final a uh a map that they're given two years to either final map or get a one-time extension from the planning commission.

And and so it's a it's essentially a very routine process, and that's the reason why we've put it on the uh the consent agenda.

Um beyond that, if the applicants the only the only other mechanism to extend a time frame outside of this process is through a development agreement that would go directly through the the county commission.

So um again, it's a very standard practice for developers to record a final map uh and then within two years to grant uh to to request the one time two year extension.

That's what you're seeing before you tonight.

Thank you for that clarification.

It just seems like we're seeing a lot of these.

And so um that's that's why.

But if you're okay.

All right, I'm fine.

Uh any further questions from the board.

Do we have any public comment on this item?

I have no public comment in chambers and no public comment on Zoom.

Okay.

Uh any discussion and debate from the board on this.

If not, I'll entertain a motion.

Uh it's on page five of the staff report.

The suggested motion.

Commissioner Owens, I'll make a motion.

I move that after that the Washoe County Planning Commission approved a two-year extension of time request until August 4th, 2028 for tentative subdivision map case number WTM 20-001 for LaDera Ranch, having determined that the final map for TM20-001 has progressed in accordance with NRS 278.360, that the original findings remain valid and that the circumstances have not appreciably changed since the original approval.

Too slow this time, Linda.

Mike Beechan.

Uh all those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

The motion carries.

Um we will move on to item 9B.

Lone tree drainage easement abandonment.

Okay.

Yeah, this is uh abandonment case number WAB 26002 uh for 3565 lone tree drainage easement for hearing discussion and possible action to approve an abandonment of Washoe County's interest in approximately 280 square feet of a 50 foot wide drainage easement near the subject parcels north property line.

The partial abandonment of the drainage easement would allow uh the applicant to build a detached garage.

And representing Washoe County in this in this matter is planner uh Jolene Bertetto.

Good evening, Jolene Bertetto, Washoe County planner.

This presentation is for WAB 26002, the 3565 Lone Tree Drainage Easement.

The request is to abandon Washoe County's interest and approximately 280 square feet of a 50-foot wide drainage easement.

The easement is located near the parcels north property line.

Here's a look at that parcel.

It's located at 3565 Lone Tree Lane.

It's 2.61 acres.

The regulatory zone is high density rural, and the planning area is the Southwest Trekkie Meadows.

And here's a look at that drainage easement.

It was created with the subdivision plat in 1973.

It's a 100-foot-wide drainage easement, and 50 feet of that is on the subject property.

You can see it on the map.

It's highlighted in yellow.

It goes across the frost ranches subdivision.

And this is a look at the portion of the drainage easement that's requested to be abandoned by the applicant.

The property line is the dotted line as shown on the screen.

And then you can see highlighted in yellow just the length of that 50-foot drainage easement.

And then the section that is being proposed to be abandoned as the 280 square feet section.

To evaluate this proposal, the applicant submitted a drainage analysis.

The analysis showed that the drainage channel on the subject property operates independently of the steamboat steamboat ditch irrigation canal, and that the channel can convey the maximum flow of water levels with at least 0.5 to one foot of water level below the top of the channel.

That analysis also found that the drainage channel is approximately 20 feet wide, which is substantially less than the 50-foot easement of their property.

And here's a look at the topography showing that the steamboat ditch is independent.

It's to the west of the subject property.

The subject property is on the map in blue.

And there are two culverts near the northwestern part of their property that is able to convey storm water that comes from the gently sloping area to the west side.

So abandoning the uh that section of the drainage easement would not affect the culverts.

They would still be able to convey stormwater as intended.

Staff recommends approvals.

We were able to make all of the findings, which includes consistency with the master plan, no detriment to surrounding properties, and there were no existing public utility easements to be impacted.

And with that, we do provide a possible motion of approval.

I'm available to answer questions.

We also have a representative from Washoe County Engineering.

Engineering staff did review that drainage analysis, and there's a representative from the applicant here for questions as well.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions from the board for planning staff, engineering staff or the applicant?

Do we have any public comment on this item?

No public comment in the chambers.

I have no hands raised.

Oddso.

All right.

Any discussion or debate?

Or a motion.

Just rob, I'll make a motion.

Move that after giving recent consideration of information containing the strap report.

Information received during the public hearing.

Washville County Planning Commission approved abandonment case number WAB 26002.

For Daniel and Mary Allen, what's the conditions including exhibit A in this matter having made all three findings in accordance with Wash County Code Section 110.806.20.

All right.

All those in favor.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

The motion carries.

We are on to item 9C.

All right, the special use permit.

Uh case number WSUP 26001 for hearing discussion and possible action to approve a special use permit for the automotive sales and rentals use type on one parcel located in the Spanish Springs Business Park.

The special use permit would allow the applicant to operate an enterprise rent a car office inside an existing automotive repair shop.

And once again, representing Washoe County in this matter is planner Jolene Bertetto.

Thank you, Trevor.

Yes, it's me again.

We'll give it a minute for the presentation.

This is for WSUP 26001, the Enterprise Office.

The applicant is requesting a special use permit to operate an enterprise or rental car office inside the existing caliber collision auto shop.

The commercial use type would be automotive sales and rentals, which in this area, this is in Spanish Springs, does require a special use permit approved by the Planning Commission, which is why we're here today.

Here's a look at the parcel.

It's at 155 Ingenuity Avenue.

The regulatory zone is industrial in the Spanish Springs planning area.

And there is an existing building here already.

It was constructed in 2023, and it is in operation by caliber collision.

Enterprise Renter is proposing to do the following opening a desk inside the existing caliber collision building, providing replacement vehicles to caliber collision customers, and providing incidental rental car services to the larger community.

But their main customer base will be those caliber collision customers who need a rental car while their personal vehicles are getting repaired, but there will also be rental car services available to the surrounding neighborhoods if needed.

No tenant improvements are taking place as the building and the parking lot are already in existence.

And were constructed quite recently up to code.

Here's a look at the site plan where Enterprise is proposing utilizing an existing office inside the building.

And here's a look at parking.

They are proposing five parking spaces that will be used exclusively for the car pickups and returns, and having one parking space for the employee who will be on site.

For traffic, they're expecting to generate two to three two-way weekday trips during peak hours, and access to the site will be from the existing entrance on Ingenuity Avenue.

And access to the site will be from the existing entrance on Ingenuity Avenue.

So pretty small impact to traffic.

Now the landscaping that was planted with the building in 2023 has died.

There is an open code violation right now, but we have been in discussion with Calibur Collision for how they're going to be remedying that.

They are going to be replacing those dead trees.

Those have been ordered and are actually expected to be planted in the coming weeks.

Landscaping standards for commercial use type requires a minimum of 20% of the total developed land area to be landscaped.

And a condition of approval from the planning and building department is that the landscaping violation is remedied before approving the final business license.

The applicant hosted a neighborhood meeting on December 10th, 2025.

There were zero attendees and 71 property owners were notified within a 500 foot radius.

Staff recommends approval as we are able to make all of the findings here on the board.

And we do provide a possible motion of approval.

And I'm available for questions, and we do have a representative here from Enterprise Rent A Car who wanted to make a statement.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

All right.

Good evening, honorable members of the Washoe County Planning Commission.

My name is Carlos Perez Campbell, representing Enterprise Rent A Car.

We are here tonight to respectfully request your approval for a special use permit for a small service-focused rental car operation located at 155 Ingenuit Avenue within Spanish Blink's planning area.

So, yep, as she basically covered this uh project involves establishing a limited scope enterprise rent car office inside the existing caliber collision repair facility.

The purpose of this location is straightforward.

Uh we will provide rental vehicles exclusively to caliber collision customers who are bringing in personal vehicles for repair.

This is not a traditional uh rental uh retail rental branch, but a convenience service uh that supports an existing local business and improves the customer experience for residents in the area.

Uh, we have carefully designed the operation to ensure that it remains low impact and fully compatible with surrounding use.

So parking, only a small number of rental vehicles will be kept on site.

They will be parked in areas already used by caliber collision and will not require new parking or expansion of the existing site for traffic because rentals are limited to caliber collision customers.

Traffic actively is minimal.

The operation will be staffed by one enterprise employee and will function entirely with caliber collision existing business hours, resulting in no meaningful change to uh traffic patterns.

Uh for the noise and environment, no vehicle washing or maintenance will occur on site of the property.

All fleet servicing, cleaning, maintenance will be done off-site at an established enterprise support location.

So this proposal strengthens an existing local business, provides no improved uh service to it provides an improved service to residents, and fits seamlessly into the current site without creating adverse impacts.

We believe that it meets all required uh findings for approval, and we respectfully ask uh for your support of this special use permit.

Thank you for your time, and I'm uh more than happy to answer any questions you guys might have.

Thank you very much.

Uh do we have any questions from the board for staff or the applicant?

Thank you very much.

Hearing none, do we have any public comment on this item?

I have no public comment chambers.

I have no hands raised on Zoom.

Thank you.

Uh, do we have any discussion?

Would anyone like to make a motion?

Rob, I'll make a motion.

I move that after giving reconsideration and information contained in the staff report.

Information received during the public hearing, Wash County Planning Commission approved with conditional special use permit case number WSUP 26-0001 for enterprise rent car with the conditions included in exhibit a dismatter.

Having made all five findings in accordance with Wash County Code section 11010.30.

Thank you very much.

All those in favor.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The motion carries.

On to item 90.

This item is uh development code amendment.

Case number WDCA 25006 for hearing discussion and possible action to initiate an amendment to Washoe County Code, Chapter 110 within Article 336 housing incentives to establish a density bonus for attainable housing that scales to the underlying regulatory zone, providing for higher achievable densities and more intense regulatory zones to establish a density bonus for attainable senior housing above the bonus for non-age restricted attainable housing to prohibit the stacking of multiple density bonuses to set the minimum period of affordable affordability at 30 years for rental projects and nine years for sale project uh products and all matters necessarily connected therewith and related thereto.

If the proposed amendments are initiated, the planning commission may recommend approval of the proposed ordinance as submitted, recommend approval of modifications based on input and discussion at the public hearing or recommend denial.

If approval is recommended, the planning commission is asked to authorize the chair to sign a resolution to that effect.

So representing Washoe County in this matter is senior planner Eric Young.

Good evening, commissioners.

I'm Eric Young, uh Washoe County Planning Staff.

This is a development code amendment to establish density bonuses for uh the development of attainable housing, also known as affordable housing.

You may recognize that Washoe County has uh been pursuing a series of um uh housing related amendments due to Washoe County's uh strategic efforts to uh address housing affordability and attainability.

Those are both identified in the in our master plan and in the county commission strategic priorities.

We've undertaken an entire series of those that have come before you.

We are maintaining a page where you can find progress on these and read about them.

It's the master plan implementation page on our website if you'd like to go uh look at the progress we've made so far.

We have called these the housing packages.

You may recognize the multifamily accessory dwelling units.

Uh we've created new housing types for missing middle, supporting senior housing development, creating infill.

Those are done.

We have two still at the end of the hopper, so to speak, allowing residential development and commercial areas, which you recently uh sent on to the county commission for first reading, and then uh um coming for a second reading on April 14th as well, is the creation of expedited process for attainable housing projects uh that we were uh asked to do by both of those we were asked to do by uh uh the legislature.

So there are two additional housing related code amendments on the agenda today.

The first one is this one density bonus for attainable housing.

The next one that you will see is density bonus for small unit development.

That's the next agenda item.

We thought we would mention that in case that you wanted to discuss the differences at the end of these two items.

If you have questions about how they relate to each other, we're happy to discuss that with you.

The primary differences though are that one is focused on attainable housing, which typically means subsidized and has an uh a much more significant administrative commitment due to uh the funding streams that are attached to it and the deed restricted requirements.

The small unit bonus does not have those uh requirements, and so while it could be used as an alternative and could be used uh to provide housing to low income, um, it does have a much broader application, a much broader market, and perhaps also uh much broader design flexibility and the ability to design different things of different costs.

So those those are the primary differences is one of them you're going to be committed to the administrative costs, um, and one of them you won't be.

So density bonuses have been around for a while.

Um they are in our master plan as uh as a um something that we may want to pursue.

Um trying to provide different um uh approaches, different flexibility, trying to come up with different ideas to address the affordability issue throughout our community.

So this has been identified as a tool in the master plan.

It's made made available to us by the state since 1999.

You might recognize some of the tools that are talked about sometimes, density bonuses, but also inclusionary zoning and minimum density zoning have been uh uh created in state statute for us to take advantage of.

We have not proposed to take advantage of anything but density bonuses.

Umsity bonus uh provided in state statute, it it it creates this for us.

It says that a bonus is to grant a density that would otherwise not be allowed under the master plan, so that you can skip zoning categories and even skip a master plan category.

Um they make it very clear that that is permitted.

Uh so that's what a density bonus is, and that's what it's uh able to do in state statute for us.

Um been around since 1999.

It's not only for inclusionary housing, you can use it for anything that the governing body feels is a uh uh uh a social need, something that the governing body determines is socially desirable.

So that can often mean things other than affordable housing.

Our own code has defined it in a very simple way.

It's just an increase in residential zoning above uh the density specified in the code.

A density bonus unit is just one of the units that you get from applying the bonus.

So we we tried to be very simple in our definition.

So while these bonuses can be used for everything from sustainable development, green development, um, all kinds of different social socially desirable outcomes, they are most commonly used to incentivize affordable or attainable housing.

You'll see that we are now shifting our terminology to attainable housing because the state legislature has adopted a new scheme that utilizes that term.

Um jurisdictions that utilize uh uh a density bonus scheme or methodology approach.

Uh will often use a tiered system that attempts to incentivize lower income groups at a higher level than higher income groups, as you can see here.

Um, and they often also include a menu of other items that you can choose from.

Uh often also tagged to whether or not you're serving lower income or higher income.

So, for instance, you will get a hundred percent bonus for 30 to 60 AMI, and you could choose um three of the other incentives.

Uh, but for the 80 to 120 percent, you only get a 25% bonus, and you may only be able to choose one of the other incentives.

So they're structured in all different ways.

They require some significant calculation.

It can be quite difficult to look at any given parcel and understand what the what the available bonuses would be for that parcel.

So while they uh do exist throughout the country and even locally in this in this way, they are complex and um are not particularly transparent in uh letting people know what is actually achievable on any given parcel without significant calculation.

So Washoe County's approach attempts to look at all AMI targets without a tiered system or without incentives.

So we do this because our master plan supports the diversification of all housing types, not just traditional multifamily.

Uh we define diversification in all the different ways that you can think of housing from market type to the way that it's built to the construction type to the density.

So our master plan supports the diversification across the board, not just multifamily.

And um this new state statute is interesting for Washio County because it creates a new tier that has never been available before.

Affordable housing has traditionally always ended at 120% of area median income.

And you may recognize that we've always talked about, well, what about workforce housing?

What about that next tier up?

What about we often call it workforce housing?

So the state created that tier, 120 to 150.

It's not recognized by the federal government, it's not uh uh this tier is not uh uh capable of receiving HUD money for traditional affordable housing that goes up to 120, but the state has created a funding stream for 120 to 150, and there could be additional funding for 120 to 150.

So we wanted to make sure that we have the ability to target this fifth tier, because the fifth tier may, as we'll see, fit better with Washoe County's existing development character than a strictly multifamily approach or a traditional multifamily approach.

So this proposal that we'll go through provides equal opportunities to non-multifamily projects, such as single family, cottage court, other middle housing that we just created in one of those other packages.

Provides equal opportunity to lower density projects that can blend with existing unincorporated development patterns.

So it's not just providing opportunities to projects.

Like we've recently approved some outstanding projects in Sun Valley that are currently being developed at that multifamily rate.

But this proposal provides incentives to other types of projects as well.

And importantly, it avoids the need to calculate the density or to sit down and apply a methodology that includes what AMI are we targeting, what's the range of AMI because nobody targets just one AMI, they always target groups of AMIs.

And so there is always a real calculation, a real methodology that has to be applied just to figure out what somebody's density is.

We we avoid that.

Our proposal has an ease of calculation and is significantly more transparent to both the uh a property owner and to a community.

We also don't have uh uh options for additional incentives like parking or landscaping, because you may also remember that that was one of our housing packages.

We did that not only for uh affordable or attainable, but we did it for all multifamily um as an attempt to make multifamily more achievable in in Washoe County.

So we already made significant strides in providing landscaping, parking, coverage, uh, open space, and and other uh uh development um uh standard um guidelines that we feel are are gonna help all multifamily, regardless of whether it's um achievable or not.

So we don't feel like we need to offer additional incentives, and then we also want to limit stacking.

We don't want to, as we work through and develop other incentives, we want to make sure that um we're very thoughtful about when we want these incentives to stack and go with each other.

So what are these different tiers?

How did that work?

Just real quickly here.

Tiers one uh uh is a new tier as well.

We didn't really used to have something that was just 30 and below, it was zero sixty.

But now we have this really, really low tier um that can be valuable for us to think about.

Um, the traditional tiers would have been the three in the middle, but would have started at zero.

And then there's this fifth tier that we get to work with, and we get to consider how this may impact availability of um um affordable housing in Washoe County, this 120 to 150, or perhaps closer to what we would consider workforce housing.

So we've created purpose acquaintility section.

Um, all new uh uh articles need this.

So we're just gonna give a quick explanation of what density bonus is, talk about stacking, do a graph decide where they're gonna round down or round up when we do the uh uh if a fraction does occur.

Um that the unit type has to be one that's already there.

This is important.

Um we don't want there to be a misunderstanding that our approach will allow you to build a type of housing that's not currently permitted.

For instance, if multifamily is not currently permitted in your zoning district, this bonus will not give you the ability to do multifamily, it's just about the density, it's not about the use time.

And then we also have provisions for the affordability both for sale and rental units.

I'm sure you're familiar with the 30-year standard for rental, that's the standard throughout our community over at the home consortium for the uh most of the units that are going into a 30-year deed restriction.

But this opportunity may create opportunities for affordable housing that's not rental, that is for sale in that 120 to 150 range.

And so we don't want to the purpose of not establishing a 30-year period and establishing a nine-year period for for sale units, is to ensure that the homeowner fully invests in his in their new investment, has that pride of ownership, so to speak.

So if we tell somebody that they are unable to sell their home and realize any of those improvements over time, if they're not able to really realize any of the return on their investment, that's a disincentive.

And this isn't your staff uh uh just worrying about this.

This is a well-documented uh uh thing that happens throughout the affordable housing community uh when talking about all the different for sale uh incentives.

So we want to make sure that after a certain period of time somebody can uh sell it at a market rate.

The nine years was uh uh established because that is a Nevada average for uh what they call home tenancy.

Nine years is the average.

Uh we did get up to 12 years during COVID.

Uh it's an interesting thing.

If you're staying in your home too long, it means you're it means your real estate market is stagnant.

So 12 years is gonna be a little too long for an average.

Uh, if you get down to uh lower than nine years into the six year range, uh then there's some other issues in your real estate market.

So actually the nine to ten years for a home tenancy is a pretty good sweet spot that Nevada has compared to other places around the country.

That's that's how that that's in there for a policy reason.

The density bonus section, it includes it starts at uh uh MDS to HDS and goes through the urban ones, and it also includes commercial.

And the concept is simply that it if you are in uh uh a particular zoning district, you get the next density up.

If you're an MDS, you get LDS.

If you're an LDS, you get HDS.

Pardon me to everybody, I should go back and say low density suburban, um high density suburban.

So this is what that would look like.

If you are in a medium density suburban zone, um, and you are looking at single family development, you're looking at single family detached, you're looking at going from three units per acre to seven units per acre.

You would be able to go on a 10-acre example from 30 to 70.

You are required under this code to uh deed restrict a minimum of 80 percent of your units to achieve the bonus.

So you would achieve a minimum of 56 deed restricted units under this scenario.

So that represents going from a medium density suburban density to a um high density suburban density.

And it follows right up the line.

Um you get the next one up.

And you can see the various um uh achievable units that you get with a minimum of 80 percent.

So these low density urban, medium density, and high density urban zones are extremely rare in the county.

Uh one of the reasons that we feel this is a valuable approach is because the cost of achieving the entitlements for developers is often a bigger barrier than the available density, that they can work with a lower density if they don't have to go through the um entitlement costs, and that one of the reasons higher densities are necessary is to spread out the cost of the entitlements.

And so we are proposing an approach that says that you can avoid the need to go through a zoning or master plan change to get your higher density, you can avoid the costs of the entitlement.

But by not having to go through that process, we have been told that these lower densities may very well make projects possible.

Here's what we're just for some discussion, what we're looking at around here locally when we're talking about what what is the AMI, what what is 150% of AMI anyway?

What is 120?

What's even just 100?

What's just the 100% of AMI?

So here are some simple calculations to help you see what we're talking about.

The 30% housing cost is what's uh uh um required um uh to meet the uh uh the residency uh component.

You can't if you're paying more than 30%, you're you're not able to get in.

So these are the numbers that we're looking at, and then also locally.

And so these can these change and are recalculated constantly.

If you wait a few months, it changes and it goes a little bit, you know, over the over the year it changes a little bit.

So this is a uh a picture in time, so to speak, but it has not changed drastically throughout this past year, it's right around this.

So um as as we showed here, 165,000 is the 150 percent.

So if you've got an annual income of 165, and let's say your other debts for your car and your student loan or whatever else you've got going on, around 1500, your down payments 20 grand, you can afford that house.

Our median home sale price is still above that, 120,000 above that.

So this still does not get you up to the median home sale price.

You're still well below that.

Um, it's still very difficult to come across a house at this price.

So we are thinking that this approach may offer people the ability to get into a home at that 165 annual income or 150% AMI.

That's the thinking behind this.

I'm happy to talk more about it.

Um I know it's um a little different than most of the density bonuses that we may come across, but importantly, we design this because we don't foresee a significant growth of multifamily low income or high income in unincorporated Washoe County.

The opportunities for multi-family in Washoe County are severely limited, and they're even more limited when we look at affordable housing, where where we're allowed to put affordable housing dollars.

So if we are going to have an approach of to of density bonuses for affordable housing, maybe we should look at a type of housing that is more consistent with our community character with the way we with our development patterns as they've existed so far, and try to provide a density bonus to the types of housing that would fit into our existing communities.

So that's what we think this 120 to 150 may do.

We don't want to take away opportunities for all the others, so those are included in there as well, um, right up to high density urban if that ever becomes available somewhere in unincorporated Washoe County.

Um, but that's the thinking behind this, and um I'm happy to discuss it with you.

Here's a potential motion if you're if you get to that point this evening.

Thank you so much.

Um we have questions per staff on them.

This is Rob, I got a question, Eric.

What's to stop an investor from coming in and buying up a bunch of homes at that price?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Let's say a developer comes in and builds a bunch of homes, gets his density bonus.

I mean, is there any safeguards in place saying that somebody has to purchase that home that's in this price range, or can somebody from the outside come in and purchase these homes and then rent them out?

No, right.

They right, they have to be um uh qualified um owners are or what have to go into them.

That's that's the you have to be a qualified um uh by both income and by um by the AMI, you have to meet the AMI standards as a qualified home buyer, and then you have to be able to meet the 30% income limit as well.

So, does that if I'm understanding that correctly?

So, for a developer to come in, let's say I wanted to build a bunch of homes on some land, would it be beneficial for me to run a credit check, find out what these people can afford and all that before I actually build the home, or would I just build the home and then just hope that they would come?

I'm just trying to so when we go in so a large investor could buy up many of them and they could could rent them, they would still have to rent them to a qualified person, it would still have to meet the AMI.

Okay, that homeowners still have to meet the AMI standard.

Um if I'm trying to understand what the idea of somebody coming and buying them all, those investors coming in from California buying up homes all over the place.

Yes, it's all over in the paper.

Yes, that yes.

So my question is by doing this to try to help developers, is it going to really help fix our problem, or is it just going to make another opportunity for an investor to come in?

I mean, because okay, I understand what you're saying.

So we met with several local developers and set with them to try and understand if this could pencil, because they're not going to do it until they've gone through the same process that they go through before they do their market rate developments.

Do these people exist, as you mentioned?

Are they out there?

Can they afford it?

Can we afford it?

So they will say that from the conversations we've had, it's on the it's on the edge of them thinking they may be able to take advantage of it, or they may not.

Um they're also looking at the next agenda item and how how might that work for us, and how might we choose between the two?

Um so it it is, yeah.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong.

I think he's asking about so in section D of 110.336.05, the first sale and any subsequent sale within the first nine years has to be to an income qualified family.

Can you just is that when they submit to the um recorder site or when they submit the sale documentation, they have to submit uh a certification that the buyer is income qualified?

Yes.

The first they all have to be deed restricted to go to that kind of a buyer.

The first buyer and any subsequent in the first nine years, and then after that, after a family's lived there for nine years, any value increase in the property would be you know, capital gains for them, it would be generational wealth to help grow their family.

I understand that.

I I just Eric had said, yes, that somebody it's it's borderline, is what he's just said.

They they could come in and buy it.

So I was just trying to get clarification.

I was just asking a question based upon the staff report.

I wasn't pointing fingers, I was just trying to get some knowledge.

That's all I'm doing.

Um does anyone else have questions for the other thing?

Okay, so somebody could come in potentially.

Is that what you're saying?

Somebody could come in like an investor and possibly buy these.

The reason I'm asking is we just put off a project for Ladera homes for two years.

It seems like the developers are coming in, people are saying, I want this, I want this, I want this, we're approving it, and nothing's getting built, and so we're coming in behind that, and we're saying, Oh, we're gonna give you more incentives to build, build, build.

They're saying, okay, and but they're not building.

And so I'm just trying to figure this out.

Are we are we just you know, kicking the can down the road?

Are people actually gonna step up?

Is this gonna really help the public, or is this gonna help investors?

I'm just I'm just trying to figure this out in my own mind, because it seems like we were just kicking the can down the road, and everybody's coming in and saying, I want help, I want help, but nobody's doing anything.

Okay, I I think I find I understand.

Thank you.

Um, the first sale by deed restriction has to be to a qualified homeowner.

You have to be, you really have to be a specialized home builder and be willing or be willing to partner with one who know who knows this.

So the even one of these projects, though, if they come in and get a subdivision approved, may have to come in and ask for an extension.

That would be a completely separate issue.

Um the extensions are often have to do with the availability of infrastructure.

It's just not there yet.

Um, the first phase took longer.

Um we found something when we were doing infrastructure.

Um, Tomwa wasn't ready, uh, NV Energy wasn't ready.

Those kind of things are extremely regular.

And that's why people come in and ask for extensions.

Um, so that could happen to one of these projects as well.

They could come in and ask for an extension after they got approved.

But the home, the original homeowner has to meet the qualifications.

Okay.

Just to your point, um Commissioner Pierce on Ladera Ranch.

Actually, they are making steady progress uh with the the build out of that development.

Um, I don't know the number of homes that have been built, but a fair number of them already have in that development.

So that was why I was asking the question, because I didn't know that.

Okay.

And so that's why I wanted to know.

It seems like it's becoming a common practice.

The developers are coming in, they're getting approved, which is great.

And we're trying to fix this problem, but nobody wants to build because the economy is the way it is.

And I didn't I I get it, I get it.

But we're putting, you know, we're paving a gold paved road for this type of stuff.

And is somebody really gonna do this, or are they just gonna get approval and then keep asking for extensions?

I I don't know.

I just I'm sorry, I'm just voicing out loud my my frustration.

We need to get some kind of homes in this town, you know, instead of just saying we're gonna do something.

We need somebody to actually do something.

Sorry, I'm done.

That's quite all right.

Uh does anyone else have questions for staff on this?

Uh do we have any public comment on this item?

Yes, and Chambers, I have one public comment for this item, Pat Davison.

If you'll please state your first and last name for the record.

Good evening, Chair Lazareshi and Commissioners.

My name is Pat Davison.

I live in District 5.

Thanks for this opportunity to comment on a very significant change to the development code.

The policy question I see is the balancing act between the county giving the additional density versus the community benefit.

Does the county receive an equal or greater benefit by giving the incentive versus any action that would happen without the incentive?

Without the incentive, we can speculate that more market rate larger homes would be built, as has been the trend.

With the incentive, we have these potential positives for the community.

First, rent prices can stabilize or go down when more attainable units are added to the long-term housing supply.

Second, an individual can start on the path of home ownership when attainable purchase units are deed restricted to income qualified homeowners for the first nine years.

And third, more housing close to job centers can reduce traffic on area roadways and allow workers to be fully engaged in the community because they live where and work here.

For the developer, the major benefit is the assigned density can be increased without going through the regulatory zone or master plan amendment process.

Plus, the developer can still offer 20% of the units at market rate.

On the other hand, we have a potential deterrent of a deed restriction on a home for purchase.

However, the overall demand for attainable housing and the nine-year term may make that deterrent factor less important, especially for first-time home buyers.

The negatives of more local traffic and other impacts than what was originally expected, could be substantial.

However, those impacts must still be addressed with any project proposal and cannot be ignored.

And you, as the planning commission may have oversight as the reviewing body for future projects using density bonuses.

It provides flexibility across income levels and clarity.

It's a great complement to the other changes you made to provide regulatory relief.

I want to thank Eric for the time he spent with me over the last couple of months to understand this.

I thought the chart he included in the staff report was very helpful to take proposed text and translate it into a real world setting.

I think you can make at least one of the findings, if not all four.

I urge your support of this package.

Thank you.

That concludes public comment in chambers.

There's no public comment on Zoom.

Thank you so much.

Um wondering if I would be able to backtrack and ask staff a question.

That's sorry, it just came up after the fact.

Can you just elaborate on if that would ease their mind?

Thank you for bringing that in.

Yes, Eric Young Plain staff.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Um Ms.

Naf raised that concern.

Um it's a legitimate concern because we wouldn't want to apply this in Tahoe.

Um, it wouldn't make sense.

Um, we knew that.

It's uh you know that.

Uh Tahoo is governed under a different master plan and a different regional agency, and it uses entirely different planning approach with different master plan categories and different uh regulatory zones, completely different regulatory zones.

And so rather than using specific language in the code that says this only applies to the Chucky Meadows uh uh regional plan area, uh, you'll see that the language is very specifically about implementing this master plan.

So the language discusses implementing envision 2040, and it the code itself utilizes the zoning districts that exist here.

So in the scheme itself, it specifically says, for instance, if you're MDS, you get HDS.

That's the thing.

There is no MDS or HGS in Tahoe.

It doesn't exist, it couldn't exist, it's not a thing that we use there.

And so that is the way that it's excluded.

It's just it is excluded because none of the provisions could possibly apply there.

Um that that's that's how that stands.

Thanks very much for that.

Um I would like to thank staff for I think coming up with a pretty innovative and elegant way to do this.

I with I appreciate your presentation about how complicated the bonus calculations can be in other areas.

And I really like how you guys um made this a straightforward entitlement that just ties it to one tier of zoning density without changing any of the land uses, without changing any permitted uses, just one tier up of density is super straightforward and um I'm sure when these projects, if this gets approved by us and the board of county commissioners when these projects come before staff, of course, you'll have to do all the uh qualification for the income stuff, but it at least should not be a complicated administrative burden just to figure out what could and couldn't be built at the property.

Um else on the board to discuss.

No, Mr.

Chair.

I like to publicly apologize, Ms.

Davidson, for not getting back to her on their last email.

Um, she's very communicative and very engaging, and we very much appreciate it.

And I didn't get back to her, so I apologize.

I'm I'm sure that's the first time that's ever happened.

All right, not hearing any further discussion.

I move that after giving reasoned consideration of the information contained in the staff report and the information received during the public hearing.

The Washoe County Planning Commission recommend approval of WDCA 25-0006 to amend Washoe County Chapter 110 development code within Article 336 housing incentives.

I further move to authorize the chair to sign a resolution contained in attachment A on behalf of the Washer County Planning Commission and to direct staff to present a report of this commission's recommendation to the Walsha County Board of County Commissioners within sixty days of today's date.

Thank you.

Uh all those in favor.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

The motion carries.

Mr.

Chair, can we take a break?

Couple minutes.

Sure.

Uh it's seven fifty.

We'll take a ten minute break and reconvene at eight o'clock.

Thank you.

So our proposal is this parcel and that it should be announced.

Oh, and that is the release and developable.

Right.

Okay.

I mean you didn't read the logic because you get but you can't do any books.

That'd be a big question.

There's no two businesses.

But yes, I do not sound possible to be disposable.

Yeah.

All of these standards.

It's the responsibility.

Whatever.

There we go.

So the force is a sense of either would you get any information?

So the weird.

So I can be everything.

So if they do want to be here, I wouldn't believe it.

But there's no way to give it to us.

This is this is absolutely locked down because I missed the notes to refer in the case.

So I'm not going to say this kind of six.

Okay, good.

Oh, speakers will get started.

All right.

I'm so sorry that you don't like the matter.

Recording stopped.

That's a two.

Yeah.

Well, I didn't want to sit by putting that down for me.

Recording in progress.

It is eight o'clock, April 7th.

This meeting of the Washoe County Planning Commission is back in session.

Would you announce item 9E, please?

Okay, this development code amendment, case number WDCA26001, the small unit density incentive for hearing discussion and possible action to initiate an amendment of uh amendment to Washoe County Code Chapter 110 within Article 336 housing incentives to add small unit density standards allowing for increased density for development with a maximum unit size of 1200 square feet and establishing requirements for utilizing the increased density allowance and all matters necessarily connected therewith and pertaining thereto.

If the proposed amendments are initiated, the planning commission may recommend approval of the proposed ordinance as submitted.

Recommend approval with modifications based on input and discussion at the public hearing or recommend denial.

If appropriate if approval is recommended, the planning commission is asked to authorize the chair to sign a resolution to that effect.

And representing Washoe County in this matter is uh planning manager Kat Oakley.

Cat Oakley, Washa County Planning.

Um I'll start out by saying something that I think everybody will be excited to hear, which is that this is the last housing package for the foreseeable future in the series.

So exciting to be here.

This is a set of amendments focused on a incentive or density bonus for small units.

To go over a little bit of the background of why we are looking at this type of policy.

I've talked about a lot of this before.

Um we've seen that housing supply trends generally have not followed household trends.

So we've seen over time, and I think everybody has observed this out in the world, household size, um that the housing size of the unit built has generally increased.

And just looking at the medium density suburban or MDS zone, we've seen between 1970 and 2022 an increase of about 1,000 square feet in the median home size.

And then in that same time period, a decrease in the US mean household size from 3.14 people per household to 2.5, which is about what it is in Washoe County.

And so what we see is you know less people in a household, more housing, um, or more more house size.

And in fact, in Washoe County, 63% of all households are either one or two-person households.

So those are folks who potentially are, you know, they're looking for housing, and the housing available to them might be bigger than what they need, um, and and makes that cost of the housing more as well as they're paying for more space.

So that's a trend we've been seeing.

And when we look to the future, um, we anticipate this trend to continue in terms of the decreasing household size, and one of the big reasons for that is the aging population.

So if you look at the Washoe County consensus forecast, currently uh seniors, so that's 65 years of age or older, are 19.1% of the population.

We expect to see that increase to 21.1% of the population by 2044.

But that's a an increase in 30,000 people who are in that senior category.

And as age increases, average household size decreases, so that's why we expect to see this trend towards smaller household sizes continue.

Um that graphic on the right just shows in different terms what I was talking about is of we are seeing a lot more smaller households, um a lot and a lot less of that kind of traditional nuclear family type household.

Um that only accounts for about 20% of American households now.

So some changing changing trends in household composition, um, kind of going opposite the trends in actual housing products.

And so that's why what we're looking at is a direct um incentive related to housing size.

This is the the text proposed, and essentially it uh it proposes a 25% density increase above the base density for units that are 1,200 square feet or less in suburban urban and commercial zones outside of the Tahoe Basin.

So those same zones really that Eric was talking about in the last presentation would be the zones that could use this density incentive.

Um there are some provisions just about the general administrative administration of this incentive, which says, for example, that um any additional bonus units would also need to be restricted to the the maximum size that people could use this for a portion of a development if they wanted to rather than the whole thing, but that they would only get the incentive for the for that portion of the units that are restricted by size.

That they would need to be under that 1200 square foot limit at the time of the initial certificate of occupancy, and then some provisions to cover those approved tentative maps or specific plants that we've got sitting out there, just to clarify that if they wanted to utilize this density incentive, they would need to get an approval for that, not it wouldn't be under their existing approval, which essentially means it would come before you all to consider.

And so lastly, there would be no variance to be granted to this section of code.

So a lot of it kind of administrative language, but the the basic idea here is that 25% density incentive for those smaller units.

Now, um why 25% and how did we get to that number?

So one thing we wanted to look at is the potential differential impacts of a smaller unit development versus a standard average development that we like to see or that we do see.

Of course, the the goal here is to increase affordability by design, and so that is that would be a benefit to the county, which is why we're looking at this type of incentive in the first place.

Um but we know that traffic in particular is a of concern of many residents in Washoe County, and so wanted to just take a look at that concept and what it might look like.

And so to get at that and to kind of think through it, we did two different forms of traffic impact assessment.

Um based on ITE traffic generation estimates, so that's the international transportation and Institute of Traffic Engineers.

Um you heard about it earlier, which is very convenient.

Um that's that's one of the measures, and that is the standard um measures we use for traffic generation in the county and and in this region.

Um then we also looked at one based on the trip RTC trip generation data from that household survey that was referenced earlier this evening.

So we looked at those numbers, and what we did was compare three model neighborhoods.

I won't get too far into it to in holding with Eric's um point that we should try to minimize the math that we do in general.

But essentially there's a standard neighborhood, and that would reflect average Washoe County statistics, which is an average household size of 2.49 people.

So if you assume a 100 unit neighborhood to make the numbers easy, that's 249 residents.

That's what the kind of average would be.

Uh a neighborhood B would be a small unit neighborhood.

So it's 125 units because it's receiving this density incentive.

Um, and it's assumed to be composed of only one and two person households in proportions, reflecting the Washoe County household size statistics.

So essentially the ratio of one and two-person households that appear in Washoe County based on uh 2024 census data is the proportions that are assumed in this scenario, assuming that they're all one or two person households.

So that's gonna result in 155 residents, and then C is again uh one in two-person households, but in proportions reflecting the average home square footage per household member in the western region in the 2020 census.

So essentially we use the average square foot per person, which is about like 734 feet, I believe, uh square feet, and reverse calculate the average number of people that would be in a 1200 square foot home to get to these numbers.

So that's that's resulting in 203 residents.

Um again, those two methods I mentioned, one is the ITE, and so um that's substantiated by traffic studies across the country, and um they have estimates based on the number of dwelling units and also the number of residents, and so we are looking at those resident-based estimates.

Um, and then this RTC household travel survey, um, that is from 2024, so the data is recent, it's local, and it um is appropriately weighted to represent Washoe County demographics.

So those are the data sources.

And essentially what's found is that in all the different methods of calculations for the different model neighborhoods, a small unit neighborhood would generate less traffic than a standard neighborhood.

Now, these this is um kind of our attempt to get at the question of what how might these types of neighborhoods be different based on the information available to us to kind of get to what number of what percentage of density incentive should we propose.

And so um you'll note that the proposed density incentive is 25%.

And so that is a number that is more conservative than the most conservative traffic estimations based on the methodologies that I just went through.

So that's a look at traffic and these numbers.

And then we also did the same thing for building bulk.

That's another impact from a residential land use.

And to do this comparison, we um looked at a small unit neighborhood that would have again the 125 units because of that density incentive.

Um but the homes would be limited to 1200 square feet.

And so assuming that is the average home size, we get to a number of 150,000 square feet.

Um and then we did some calculations based on average M MDS home sizes between 1970 to 2024, and also those for the more recent homes from 2019 to 2024.

You'll see that average home size is quite a bit bigger than the home average home size that includes those older homes.

Um and you'll also see that those numbers are significantly larger than what the maximum building bulk would be in a small unit neighborhood, even with those 25 additional units.

So in general, for a small unit neighborhood, the building bulk would be significantly less than it would be for a standard neighborhood.

So that's a little bit of a look at the why behind the numbers.

Umly one finding must be made to support these amendments, as you all are aware.

And uh staff makes the case for all four findings in the staff report.

There's a recommended motion for your consideration, and I am happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much.

Um questions from the board for staff.

All right, do we have any public comment on this item?

I do have one public comment in chambers, Pat Davison.

If you'll please state your first and last name for the record.

Hello again, Pat Davison.

Just a couple of comments.

Uh, this is another example where the county's taking a voluntary and flexible approach to motivate developers.

If we get something from this new section, it's better than nothing.

I'm especially impressed by staff's analysis on the traffic numbers and building bulk.

Those things usually command attention with any project.

Good to see the comparisons.

Safeguards here include the prohibition on variances and the new requirement that already approved tentative maps and specific plans have to go through the approval process again if they want to use this incentive.

That makes sense.

Who knows?

We might see some already approved projects get Yimby support, which is yes, in my backyard.

If a project is revised to consist of smaller units, just imagine.

So let's see how this plays out.

That's it from me.

I hope we support this.

The last change to the development code.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have no public call further public comment in chambers and no hands raised on Zoom.

Thanks.

Um, I appreciate staff tailoring this density bonus to specifically not trigger uh overall housing bulk increase or overall traffic increase, but um allow for density that is achievable without greater impact to the neighborhoods around.

Um I'll be supporting this item.

Uh would anyone else like to discuss?

All right.

Um in that case, I move that after giving reason consideration to the information contained in the staff report and the information received during the public hearing.

Walshore County Planning Commission initiate and recommend approval of WDCA26-0001 to amend Washoe County chapter 110 development code within Article 336 housing incentives to add small unit density standards allowing increased density for dwelling units with a maximum unit size of 1200 square feet and establishing requirements for utilizing the increased density in all matters necessarily contained there with and pertaining there to.818.15E.

This is Robert Kat said that we only had to make one finding, but the motion says all four.

Um I can make all four findings.

It's only necessary for you to be able to make one to support the motion.

Commissioner Owens for a second.

All those in favor.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

Motion carries.

Mr.

Lloyd, item nine F.

Yeah, this is Master Plan Amendment case number WMPA 25003 and regulatory zone amendment.

Uh WRZA 25004.

For hearing discussion and possible action to initiate and approve resolutions to one, adopt a series of master plan text amendments to bring the Washoe County Master Plan into conformance with the Trucking Meadows Regional Plan.

Two, adopt master plan amendment uh master plan map amendments to the Cold Springs North Valleys, Northwest, Southwest, Truckee Meadows, and Verdeye Master Plan Land Use Maps in order to apply the open space master plan category to 40 parcels, which were released from the City of Reno Sphere of Influence.

Three, recommend adoption of the regulatory zone amendments to the Cold Springs, North Valley, South West Truckee Meadows, and Verde Regulatory Zone Maps in order to apply the open space regulatory zone to a subset of 20 of those parcels, including other parcels that are located outside of the adopted Washoe County regulatory zone map areas, and four, if approved, authorize the chair to sign uh master plan and regulatory zone uh amendment resolutions to this effect.

Uh the 40 parcels proposed uh to receive the open space master plan land use category are designated uh in the staff uh report that it's that you all have the subset of uh 20 and the uh additional subset of 20 parcels uh to receive the open space regulatory zone designations.

Uh uh representing uh Washa County once again in this matter is uh senior planner Eric Young.

Good evening, commissioners uh Eric Young, Washoe County Planning Program.

Tonight we have three separate but related items on our on this agenda, one agenda item.

We have master plan text amendments that are intended to bring the county's master plan into conformance with the regional plan.

We have master plan map amendments to provide master plan designations to a group of 40 publicly owned parcels released from the city of Reno's sphere of influence.

And we have zoning amendments to a subgroup of 20 of those above 40 parcels in order to establish a zoning designation.

The master plan text amendments uh to get our plan into conformance, come in two groups, schedule amendments and new policies.

The scheduled amendments were requested upon the original adoption of our master plan.

Um they were identified as things that we should include at our first um opportunity.

The new policies are uh amendments that are associated with changes to the regional plan itself that have occurred since we adopted our plan.

The scheduled amendments include language to uh uh talk more about the resort services area mechanism to include a policy that talks about coordination of land uses with military installations to include language talking about land use compatibility at a local level, include language that specifically addresses natural slopes greater than 15 but less than 30, and to remove references to the Reno Stead Corridor Joint Plan.

So you can see that these scheduled amendments you can see why these are just scheduled amendments and not things that would hold up our conformance review.

They're almost in the in the realm of cleanup um administrative uh uh fixes, language to make a contemporary.

Uh so these are the scheduled amendments.

The new policies.

Um there are three of them.

One has to do with uh regional plan policy uh for natural resource consideration areas.

Uh what they have done over regional essentially created a really powerful new uh tool, uh uh an online active map where you can uh use you can use it to identify a lot of the um uh natural resource issues on your parcel or around your parcel.

And they are requiring us and everybody to use these to use this tool uh when there's an amendment that will impact the regional plan.

It's uh uh all three jurisdictions work together to develop the tool.

We were all on board with the creation and the use of the tool.

And it all three jurisdictions will likely use this tool beyond just for um uh regional plan things.

Another new policy has to do with trails.

Uh wanted to make sure that our uh uh the Truckee Meadows Trails Plan is represented.

So we have addressed that as well with a new policy.

The next new policy has to do with source water protection and watershed management.

Uh once again, they have a pretty good tool, and they want to make sure that we use the integrated source water and watershed protection plan.

Um so this once again is a is something that we will probably use beyond just when it's required for regional plan conformance, and in fact, it's something that um we were already doing before the regional plan asked us to do it.

So the amendments that are related to these 40 parcels.

So the sphere of influence, I think most of us recognize, but for those who don't, the sphere of influence is an area into which a city plans to expand in the next 20 years based on population projections and capacities for growth.

An SOI cannot exist outside the Trucking Matters Services area, and a change to a city sphere of influence constitutes a regional plan amendment.

So these 40 parcels were previously in the City of Reno Sphere of Influence.

They determined that they did not want to annex them and they should not be in an annexation plan.

Uh so uh they were removed.

They are not in any one particular area, they're scattered throughout the Truckee Meadows.

There are also those 20 parcels that will, in addition to requiring a master plan designation, require a zoning designation as well.

Each of these parcels is characterized with some form of development constraint.

Uh these parcels mostly it's all slopes, um, is the significant development constraint on these.

Uh uh interestingly, often those fifth in between 15 and 30 or even above 30 percent slopes as identified in that uh uh last item.

And uh they also um uh contain uh what the county code identifies as the important targets for conservation.

So they are um all 40 of these parcels are uh ripe for a designation of open space, and that is the uh proposal for you tonight is to designate all 40 of these parcels with an open space master plan designation, and the 20 parcels that don't um already currently have an open space designation uh to apply that open space designation on them as well.

So that all 40 parcels at the end would have both open space and master plan and zoning.

These are the seven items in our code that are listed as items that should uh uh receive conservation.

These are uh all many of these items are uh on those 40 parcels or or spread around them.

Um but they all fall under the federal land management.

Um one of them is is state, um, but we believe that's represented here as well.

So all all of all 40 of those parcels fit at least one or more of these uh uh seven conservation goals.

Our existing master plan, if you're uh interested, how our existing master plan would absorb these uh uh this concept and would uh react to this concept.

Uh there are many spots throughout our uh existing uh master plan that support this idea on these projects on these parcels.

Um here's a list of some of the areas where we found in our own master plan that supports this idea of open space uh master plan and zoning on all of these parcels.

So um I have some motions for you for the master plan and for uh the zoning.

Um looks like I've got two for the master plan in there, but I have motions for you.

I did not um include maps on this PowerPoint presentation because I couldn't get them to show up in a way that we'd be able to see.

Um they are available if you would like to look at the maps, they are all in your package, um, presented in a variety of different ways available for it to look at if you feel that we should um uh bring them up.

I believe that uh someone here would probably be able to bring them up for us to look through the maps if you feel we need to do that.

Um there is also included in your package uh better, more like an annotated description of how we are including the narrative changes, the textual changes for regional plan conformance, uh, where those will will go and the specific language that we are using that is included in your package as well.

Um that shows how those will be uh specifically written and inserted into the plan.

If you'd like to discuss any of those, that is available to bring up and present on the on the screen as well.

But that's that's my presentation for you on this, and I'm happy to discuss it.

I will I should mention public comment.

We did have a neighborhood meeting.

No one attended.

Um I don't have any public comment.

I do have a lot of public questions.

Um I I've been contacted by several members of the public who were extremely alarmed um at this proposal.

Um, and it and um I think that comes from the difficulty of taking the case description and just absorbing it.

It's really dense, it's difficult to kind of understand what it is.

It might be a lesson in trying to write them a little more public friendly instead of legal friendly.

Apologize.

Um, but it was alarming to several people in in the idea that they thought that it was a proposal to sell the federal land to developers.

And so um, there is also a group um of people who've been experiencing some development issues up off of the end of Hogue Road in the North Valleys area.

Um they were alarmed, thinking that this might be a proposal to sell the land as well.

Um, I spent time with with uh with those people um uh discussing what this actually is, and and I believe I was successful in explaining to everybody that this is about establishing open space on these parcels, that it is it is the least developable of all of our categories, and that the proposal here really is to take these sensitive lands that are not suitable for development, not suitable for disposal, and once and for all give them the open space designation that that really gives our land use map when we're looking at it.

It's much going to be much more accurate.

It's going to be much more real to look at it and see where development really is possible and where it's not, because it's going to take all this federal and state land off the table, clearly show it as open space, so that we can see that that's not where development is going to go, and we'll be able to see uh the actual developable areas.

So it's far more transparent.

It puts a far more appropriate designation on these parcels, and um I think that at the end of the day I was I was able to communicate that to the people who were originally alarmed by the proposal.

Um so that that's where I'll conclude the presentation.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

Uh any questions for staff from the board.

Do we have any public comment on this item?

I have one public comment in chambers.

Christine Gilbert, if you'll please come to the podium and state your first and last name for the record.

Hi, my name is Christine Gilbert.

Uh, and I just want to say thank you to Eric for explaining everything to me.

I missed that meeting.

And uh, of course, we are relieved that now it's going back to being open space.

Um I don't know if that land was included in your budget or if there had to do with any budget concerns when it came to um, you know, that land going over to city.

But um, I think is the budget go out in June.

Is that when your budget is?

Is it in June?

You guys do another county budget?

So I don't know if that's gonna have anything to do with it.

Um, but you know, of course, we are relieved.

And I just want to mention that when we were driving here, the traffic all the way from Lemon Drive all the way down the hill to North Virginia in front of the bonanza was a steady stream of cars.

That's what it's like.

So it is a big relief that we won't have any more developing, at least for a while.

And just a heads up, Amazon building is still empty in case they want to put more warehouses, so that needs to be filled.

But I just want to thank Eric again.

Thank you.

I have no further public comment in chambers.

I do have one hand raised on Zoom.

Craig, please unmute and state your first and last name for the record.

Thank you.

Yeah, hi.

Um my question is on the subset of 20 parcels.

Would that be open to being developed?

And or like perhaps the trade will develop will give you um additional or bigger open space for trade of these parcels.

Eric Young, Mr.

Chair, to answer the question.

Um the the no um that's not part of this proposal in any disposal of these parcels would require the same uh disposal process of of any federal parcel.

These are not none of these parcels are part of the parcels that were or considered for potential uh uh disposal by the federal government.

Um I suppose somebody could always make that proposal.

Nobody has proposed it to us now.

Um but the the concept behind both the master plan for the 40 and the zoning for the subset of the 20 is to for the foreseeable future lock it down as undevelopable open space.

That that's the that's the concept of what we're trying to propose.

Thank you.

Um other public comment?

Is that the last?

I have no further public comment in chambers or Zoom.

All right, any discussion from the board would anyone like to make the motion or motions.

Okay.

Um start with the master plan.

I move that after giving reason consideration of the information contained in the staff report and the information received during the public hearing.

The Washoe County Planning Commission adopt the resolution contained as exhibit A of the staff report to amend the master plan as set forth in the master plan amendment case number WMPA 25-0005, having made at least three of the five findings in accordance with Washoe County Code section 110.820.15D.

Further move to certify the resolution and the proposed master plan amendments in WMPA 25-0005 is set forth in the staff report for submission to the Washer County Board of County Commissioners and authorize the chair to sign the resolution on behalf of the planning commission.

Commissioner Owens for a second.

All those in favor?

I aye.

Any opposed.

Okay, the regulatory zone amendment.

I move that after giving reason consideration to the information contained in the staff report and the information received during the public hearing, the planning commission adopt the resolution as a included as exhibit B recommending adoption of the regulatory zone amendment case number WRZA 25-0006.

Having made all of the findings in accordance with Washoe County Code Section 110.821.15D.

I further move to certify the resolution in the proposed regulatory zone amendment in WRZA 25-006 as set forth in the staff report for submission to the Washoe County Board of Commissioners and authorize the chair to sign the resolution on behalf of the Washaw County Planning Commission.

Commissioner Nelson will second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Both motions pass unanimously.

Would anyone on the board uh like a future agenda item or do you have any requests for information from staff?

All right.

Uh 11A, do we have any reports on previous planning commission items?

Yeah, just one uh one item to report on.

On March 10th, the county commission heard the appeal to the Sierra Reflections uh tentative subdivision map, and they uh overturned the decision of the planning uh commission by a vote of uh three to two.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Uh anything from legal hearing none.

Uh do we have any public comment at this time?

I have no further public comment in chambers or on Zoom.

We are adjourned.

Recording stopped.